


Rowboat

by magikfanfic



Category: Runaways (Comics), Runaways (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Worth Issues, ie almost character death, references to comic canon events
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-16
Updated: 2018-01-16
Packaged: 2019-03-05 19:39:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13394832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magikfanfic/pseuds/magikfanfic
Summary: 02. At my worst, I worry you’ll realize you deserve better.  At my best, I worry you won’t. (I’ve never been better.)Failure is a thing that Chase Stein is intimately familiar with. Some people have pets, mantras, touchstones, good luck charms. Some people have methodologies and habits. A few, likely fewer than claim to, have faith. Chase has failure. It feels etched into his bones, burned into his skin, threaded into his hair, and expelled with every breath that he has ever taken. When his heart beats, he thinks that it must surely pump failure through his veins to ensure that it is forever and always ingrained in every part of his body, so deep that he’ll never be free of it. Not really. Even though he has covered it over with this shiny veneer, this lie of being the popular jock, the lacrosse star, the guy that all the girls swoon over–almost all of them but that’s the problem, isn’t it?–the failure is still there under the surface, waiting for someone to scratch the new paint job off and find it waiting, a declaration that he can never run far enough away from because it’s just innately a part of him.





	Rowboat

**Author's Note:**

> This was written in response to an A Softer World prompt I was given on Tumblr. It got longer and sadder than I expected. Also, it's a bit of a mess.

02\. At my worst, I worry you’ll realize you deserve better. At my best, I worry you won’t. (I’ve never been better.)

Failure is a thing that Chase Stein is intimately familiar with. Some people have pets, mantras, touchstones, good luck charms. Some people have methodologies and habits. A few, likely fewer than claim to, have faith. Chase has failure. It feels etched into his bones, burned into his skin, threaded into his hair, and expelled with every breath that he has ever taken. When his heart beats, he thinks that it must surely pump failure through his veins to ensure that it is forever and always ingrained in every part of his body, so deep that he’ll never be free of it. Not really. Even though he has covered it over with this shiny veneer, this lie of being the popular jock, the lacrosse star, the guy that all the girls swoon over–almost all of them but that’s the problem, isn’t it?–the failure is still there under the surface, waiting for someone to scratch the new paint job off and find it waiting, a declaration that he can never run far enough away from because it’s just innately a part of him.

He knows his father recognized it, saw his utter inability to live up to anyone’s expectations, no matter how small, and wonders if it was this lack that resulted in the blows Victor reigned down on him his entire life. If he had been born better, maybe none of that would have happened. The fault, it seems, lies within him rather than within his father, which makes sense. Victor Stein is a genius. Victor Stein is a man who has made many wonderful marvels that have helped move the world forward. And he is a failure. Who could blame a brilliant man for being disappointed when his only son is shown to be lacking something integral?

Who could blame him for getting mad about that and lashing out?

Chase can’t. At least, not on the bad days. He knows what the others would say if he mentioned this mess to them. They would take his side because, somehow, even though he’s positive they can see the failure, they don’t seem to care as much. They don’t realize the hazard he poses, the danger that he puts them in just by being there, around them, near. He is a failure, and things that he touches have a habit of turning to dust beneath his hands. This isn’t something he wants to do to them, but he also can’t make himself leave them even if he thinks it would be better in the long run.

He can’t make himself leave Gert. He also can’t make himself say that aloud. To her. He can barely acknowledge it in his own heart, in his own head. The idea of forming it into words is terrifying because what if he’s wrong? What if he fails in loving her just as much as he fails in everything else?

What if Gert gets hurt?

And that ends the discussion right there before it even begins because he cannot allow that. No matter what happens to him, Gert needs to be okay. Gert is fantastic and important. She is smart and witty. She is a forest fire of thoughts and ideas and the ambition to see each and every one of them through to the end. If anyone in their group can change the world for the better, it is Gert, and he means to ensure that she gets that chance. Someday. Somehow. Even if it means he has to die for it. It seems like a just and right cause.

They trade quips back and forth, and he tries not to think of it like dancing. Chase knows that this type of attention from Gert is one of her ways of showing affection. People she doesn’t like, she ignores, doesn’t talk to, doesn’t bother with unless they need to be verbally cut down at the knees. But people she trusts, people whose company she enjoys get to experience what is a mostly friendly exchange of almost insults. He goes along with it, of course, much like he goes along with everything. Chase is a rowboat with no oars on the ocean, always drifting this way and that at the behest of the tides. He dares not try to take control of the situation because that is how you capsize and drown. Going with the flow has always been easier, falling into the patterns the world wants him to take is easier. There is less chance of failure, there is less chance of disappointment if no one knows what you can do, if everyone already thinks you’re a moron anyway.

They’re sitting in one of the rooms of the sunken mansion, companionably, in silence. Gert is reading one of the many books in the house that has not succumbed to dry rot or filled with water and mold, and he is just sitting, trying to watch her in a way that is not obvious. Though he does watch her. Often. He watches her breathe, he watches her laugh, the way she tucks her hair behind her ear one, two, three times or more in conversations when she is agitated. Gert is close to the vest with her emotions, but they slither out in stressful situations, hissing at anyone who gets too close. He’d love to be able to calm her. He’d like to be able to tell her that everything will be alright, but it would be a lie because he doesn’t know. It would be a lie, and she would be disappointed, and he would be a failure. And he just.

He can’t. He cannot stomach being a bigger failure in her eyes than what he knows he already is, a friend who drifted, got popular, stopped talking to her, stopped being him to become what the world wanted. In truth, Chase is the perfect example of so many things that Gert hates about the world, and he has listened to her enough to know it. He does listen to her even if she thinks he doesn’t, even if he seems like he doesn’t, even if he doesn’t always understand. He hears her. Her words stick in his mind like throwing stars embedded into a wall, like something from all the old ninja movies they used to watch together. Gert has never been good about softening her verbal blows; it’s just one of the many things that make up her personality, and he’s okay with that because it’s her.

So the stars stick there, and he bleeds around them, but he learns from it. And he listens. He just doesn’t tell her that because he doesn’t want her to think that he’s someone who can be depended on. He’d rather be thought of as the dumb fuck-up, the irrational, impulsive man-child. It’s easier. It’s so much easier. And it’s a height from which he can survive when he falls. There is no if. He will fall, he always does. The trick, especially now, is not to take the rest of them down with him and not to shatter into so many pieces when he lands that he is of no use whatsoever anymore. He’s a tool–Gert has accused him of as much though she doesn’t mean it in the way that he does when he applies it to himself–and tools can be useful. They are made to be used. He can be used. That’s fine. That’s okay. As long as it helps them.

As long as it helps her.

Sometimes he wonders if there’s a way he can get the rest of them out of this mess, but every single idea he has is tinged with that inevitable glint of failure. Something will go wrong, and then they will be in an even worse situation than the current one. There is a lot to be said for what they have right now. They have food, and they have shelter, working lights, and water. And, yeah, they are slowly slipping into the earth and some of the rooms are too wet or lost to mud, but they are not on fire, they are not on the streets. He has managed something somewhat good for them in bringing them here.

It just doesn’t feel like enough, and it feels like it will fall off into the ocean at any moment, leave them shocked and gasping for air. They will see what a moron, failure, disappointment he is, for real this time, and make him leave. Maybe they would be better off without him. Probably. But. He really can’t stand the thought of watching them leave him behind even if it would be better for them. He’s selfish like that, he supposes, wants what’s best for them but just as long as it includes him.

“What are you thinking about, Stein?”

Her voice is unexpected, almost strange. It is soft and there are no barbs in it this time, a rose pruned of all its thorns, and Chase isn’t really used to that. He thought she was reading. “Nothing.” It’s an easy lie, and it’s the answer that’s expected of him. Chase Stein, the big, brainless jock. Chase who has perfectly managed the thousand yard blank stare when asked difficult questions not because he doesn’t have an answer but because he doesn’t want to give the answer.

Gert sets the book aside without even bothering to slip something between the pages to mark her place, which Chase thinks is probably because she doesn’t need it. That’s just the kind of memory that Gert has, sharp and keen and comprehensive enough to recall every single mistake he’s ever made and every dumbass thing he’s done to her or in front of her. “I’m calling bullshit on that.”

He shifts, leaning further into the arm on the other side of the couch as though that will make him small enough to disappear into it. The obvious solution, the easy one, would be to get up and leave the room, divorce himself from the possibility of saying something dumb by simply not being there to say something dumb. But he doesn’t want to leave her company even when he’s discomforted by it, and, god, what does that say about him?

“For one thing,” she continues, pushing her glasses up her nose and then begins fiddling with her hands, which is the sort of thing that Gert only ever does when she’s nervous about something, and Chase wonders how many people in the world know about that, whether he’s in a small, select club. “I don’t think you could conceivably have been thinking about nothing for that amount of time without the very real likelihood of being braindead.”

The corner of his lip quirks automatically because this is Gert engaging him in conversation, teasing in the way she has that means she sees you and you are worth the effort. It means as much to him as a kiss from a crush might mean to someone else, which is probably sad and pathetic. He should probably want more from this, from them. He should probably be trying harder, attempting romantic gestures, doing something to express the way his heart threatens to bubble over like microwaved instant oatmeal in a shallow bowl, but what would he do if he caught her? He’s a failure. He’s a vase that just keeps rolling down the stairs, endlessly loud, completely broken, yet always smashing even more. And he’s also the person who knocked the vase down the stairs and just keeps doing it because he’s too dumb to manage anything more. Hadn’t his father said as much, once? More than one. Hadn’t his father said as much every single time he hit him even if it wasn’t always in words?

“Chase?” This time her voice is different, and he recognizes the soft concern she gets when she talks about the fact that they cannot only feed Molly sugar no matter how much she asks for it. How they need to make sure to maintain decent sleep schedules despite the fact that she’s the one with the worst habit of not sleeping out of all of them.

He remembers birthday parties when they were younger, Gert with her hair in some braid that was both intricate and yet wrong because her parents tried–they tried so damn hard all the time and he hates them but he loves them too because it was always apparent in every single thing they did how much they loved her–handing over packages that had been wrapped poorly but with care, and how the presents inside of them were always startlingly perfect even if it ended up being something you needed instead of something you wanted. When he was twelve, she gave him a stack of books that he had initially thought were lame only to realize, once he started reading them, that they were lush and beautiful and full of wonder. Everyone else had been getting him action figures or video games or sports equipment. Gert had given him worlds full of wonder and magic and danger and friendship. In the long run, her gift had meant the most.

“Hey, earth to Chase. We’re getting a little worried here, space cadet.” Gert has moved closer to him, and he can see how green her eyes are behind her glasses. They’re not always easy to see, and it’s not just because of the glasses but also because of the fact that Gert purposefully holds herself back from people. She hovers at the edges of the group, crosses her arms over her chest, will plant her feet in a power stance and literally lean away from people so that they can’t get too close. She wasn’t always like that. He remembers group huddles when they were children, limbs everywhere playing Twister, arms slung over shoulders, around waists. They were a pack, close as everything. There were times when their limbs would all tangle together and no one knew which belonged to who and no one cared because it didn’t matter. When does time change that, he wonders? Where is the demarcation between when it is okay to let other people touch you and when you build up the wall? Why does it happen? How does it stop?

Chase knows why he sometimes flinches from unexpected contact. He understands checking rooms for exits and making sure to avoid corners or places where you can be trapped. The years have taught him when to sense that a punch is coming, how to dodge it or twist so that it doesn’t hurt as much if you can’t avoid it completely. Gert doesn’t employ the same tactics that he does, and he doesn’t understand the purpose of her avoidance. He also cannot bring himself to ask about it, worried because not only is it not his place but depending on what the answer is he may want to do something that he has no right or means to do. Like, punch out half the people who went to school with her. Or something else. He doesn’t know. What he does know is that any quest he attempts to take up will end in failure. So why should he try? Why should he try at all?

It’s hard not to want to try, however, when she is right next to him on the couch, her knees pressed to the side of his leg, her green, searching eyes right there as though she can look deep enough into the sea of him to discover what scuttles dark and unknown along the bottom. How many quests does Gert have? How many missions? How many wrongs to right? It seems like all of them sometimes. It seems like she has decided she will cup the whole entire world in her small palms and never put it down until she has fixed it all. Chase knows, he already knows, that it will leave her scarred and marked and bruised, that it will flay the skin from her hands and strip the warmth from her heart and drown all the compassion in her mind.

The world is a dark place. Even the people who are supposed to love and care for you do not. It’s easier to be a rowboat. It’s easier to just let go, allow it to take you where it will, back and forth and all around on the open, crashing waters. It’s better than fighting.

They ran because they could not fight, but he knows Gert wanted to, wants to. Gert is a pacifist, but she still wants to find a way to beat them. It’s not worth it, he wants to say. It’s best to just keep running, hand in hand forever. Chase, for his posturing, does not like conflict, does not like violence, though he can hold his own in a fight. (Except against his father. Never against his father. But then Victor Stein, no matter how tall Chase got, how broad, has always been ten feet tall, a tornado trapped in human skin.)

“Chase?” Her fingers touch his cheek, hesitantly, and he turns his head slightly, hopes she will not draw away. She doesn’t. But she also doesn’t say anything so they stay there like that for a beat, her hand on his cheek, his eyes closed, head canted just enough that it’s obvious this is not nothing, and even though his heart should be pounding, he should probably be breathing faster, he’s calmer in her storm than anywhere else.

Stupid rowboat. Stupid tool.

She saved his life. When he drowned, she breathed air back into his lungs. He woke to the image of Gert Yorkes, hard, hardened, jaded to those with no fucking eyes to see her soft but determined, a glowing sputtering torch of truth, saving his life, the sensation of her lips against his own. He woke to wrap an arm around her and pull her closer, try and show her what it meant to him that she cared by kissing her back, his tongue inept, his mind fogged and swimming. Half-dead, half-alive, barely back from the brink of nothing, uncoordinated, a failure at dying as much as at living, and the first thing he did was kiss her. His lips haven’t felt right since, and they haven’t really talked about it because that’s not what they do, have real discussions.

That’s not what he does. Gert has lots of real discussions, sometimes she has them with herself because no one else will listen. He has heard her, ranting at herself, ranting at the walls, and wanted to knock, go in, listen, but doesn’t. Because he would fail her somehow. If he lets her wrap a hand around his wrist, if he gives her any sense of trust, any stable ground, he will inevitably fail and doom her. There is nothing he wants more than to keep her safe, and he is not safe. Far from it.

“Chase,” her voice wavers, and he remembers her momentary hesitation before they plunged down into the Hostel, the way he wanted to hold her and reassure her that it was okay but didn’t because how could he. “Can you please talk to me? Are you okay?” She has not moved her hand.

He opens his eyes, and she is still there, bright green eyes, brash purple hair, teeth sunk into her bottom lip because she is concerned. “I’m fine.”

“You’re not acting fine.”

“I’m just thinking. You’re right, it’s really hard for me.”

Gert looks slightly pained, regretful. “I don’t.” Her hand threads up into his hair. “I don’t actually think it’s difficult for you to think. I don’t really believe you’re a moron. You know that, right?”

Does he know that? He thinks that maybe he does or used to. He definitely used to believe it when she would gift him books and then call him to talk about them at length. Gert has never slept normally, always up late into the night, and Chase would make himself stay awake to talk to her, to listen to her, while they discussed the books she got him. And Gert never made fun of his ideas about them even if he had no ideas about them at all other than the fact that he liked something in them, some word, some character, just the fact that her hands had touched it before he did.

How long can you be in love with someone, Chase wonders, as he watches her face. How long can you be in love before it washes away like Sharpie on skin? How do you make it permanent, tattoo it into your skin, your heart?

Her hair has slid forward, covering part of her face, and he reaches to tuck it behind her ear, tries not to linger, tries not to think about the day she breathed life back into his body. He answers her with a question of his own. “Were you worried?”

When she pulls back just a bit, she looks surprised. It’s hard to catch Gert by surprise, and Chase carves the victory into his heart like he is Alexander the Great conquering the world. “What?”

“When you gave me CPR, were you worried?”

Gert looks a little like she has been hit by a car or seen a ghost or been told she’s failed an exam. Gert looks a little bit lost, and he regrets saying anything at all.

The words rush out of him so quickly he can barely keep up with them, but he just wants to take it back, undo that expression on her face that hurts him more than any injury his father ever bestowed on him. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked. Forget it. I’m sorry.” He tries to pull away, thinks it will likely be better if he retreats, flees back to the room he has declared as his own, in the back, near where the mansion has sunk the furthest. He wants to be there, to know when it all starts to go so that he can warn them.

He tries to pull away, but both her hands are on his face now.

“Yes.” The word is whispery and strange. Chase has never heard Gert speak so low except when she’s trying not to wake Molly and even then it never shakes the way it shakes now like she’s afraid of something. That’s ridiculous. Gert is afraid of nothing. “I was terrified of losing you.”

It’s a big admission.“Oh.” His heart is a train that has gone off the rails and is crashing through the white picket fences he imagines must exist in the American Midwest. He can’t stop smiling.

Gert is blushing and won’t look at him. She looks pissed, which is her default when she doesn’t know what else to do. “Look. Stop. Chase. Stop grinning like that.”

“Why?” He is reduced to one-word responses and looking like a fool. He has settled his hands over her own so that she cannot move them. He keeps brushing the tips of his fingers over hers, debating whether she will let him hold them or if that will just make her bolt.

“I don’t need you to make fun of me about it.”

“I would never.” It sounds like a prayer from his lips, and Chase has never prayed for anything before, not really, never believing it would do any good considering the world around him and who he is, what he has always been, a boy who should be golden but cannot succeed at anything.

That makes her gaze lock back onto him, and he knows that look. It’s her searching look, her digging through everything within reach to try and find the truth of the thing look, and he lets her. He shouldn’t, he knows. He should slam the door. He is a failure. He is a disaster waiting to happen. He is an anchor that will probably sink the entire ship, but he. He is also selfish, and he wants to stay trapped, pinned by her eyes. One day, he will probably make her regret this, but he doesn’t think he ever will.

And people can change, can’t they? Maybe he can unlearn how to be a failure. Maybe that can be stripped off of him like clothes, peeled away as easily as glue dried across a palm like a second skin.

“Why would I make fun?” His fingers twist into hers, and she lets him. She lets him. This is Gert and that simple fact speaks volumes.

Gert has her lip between her teeth, but her eyes never leave his face. He wonders what she’s looking for, wonders how to make it blatant, tries to soften his eyes, his mouth, pushes it to the forefront of his mind just in case Gert might be able to read it through the bone and blood and skin. “Because you’re Chase Stein, and I’m.”

“Wonderful,” he finishes for her, and she screws her face up at the interruption but doesn’t look mad the way she is normally mad when he cuts her off.

“Not what I was going to say.”

“No, but it’s true regardless.” He knows. Oh, he knows. Because he feels like that, too, worthless, a tool, nothing. He knows what it’s like to not have your inner self reflect what other people think, what other people see. He understands even if he doesn’t get it because Gert. Gert is. Gert IS in every sense of the word. Gert is an active sentence. Gert does things, Gert thinks things, Gert moves forward. Chase is passive, drifting, waiting.

How could she ever think she is anything less than herself? Whose face does he need to punch in for making her think that? God, probably his own. Probably his own dumb face. Is it possible to punch yourself, he wonders?

“You saved my life.” He’s still in awe of that. Maybe he shouldn’t be. Maybe it speaks loads to how much life with his parents has ruined him that Chase thinks his life might have been better if the period of its sentence occurred that day, on the ground, cold and wet and done.

“That doesn’t make me wonderful. That just makes me a decent person.”

“I still think you’re wonderful.” Unable to shut up or not speaking at all. Why are these his two default positions, and why does she bring both of them out so much? It’s not just that. Being near Gert lets Chase say true things. Most of the time when he’s talking, it’s just talking, things to fill the quiet, but with her things get way more real. It might be annoying if it wasn’t so almost terrifying. It would be more terrifying if it wasn’t oddly freeing in some way. God, he doesn’t understand anything, does he? Maybe he is just as dense as his father always thought.

Her hands are still in his, and Chase doesn’t know if the trembling is her or him or both of them. When was the last time he touched someone this long?

“And I still think you might have legitimately suffered brain damage.”

Is this Gert’s way of simply trying to dismiss him, make the truth pouring from his mouth stop because it is too much, it is unwanted, or is she trying to get at something else? What does he mean when he attempts to push people away? He is trying to protect them, protect himself, because he is a failure who brings nothing good to anyone. Is this, then, Gert’s way of trying to let him know that she fears she is the exact same thing. He hopes not. But if it is, he wonders if there is any way he can prove her wrong. Even though she deserves better than him. Deserves nothing less than the best. “I thought you were wonderful before almost dying.”

“Well.” She swallows, and he tries not to think about what it would be like to press his lips against her throat. “I didn’t say that the brain damage was recent.”

Chase tugs on her hands, just the smallest, gentlest pull, but she follows it, moves closer to him, straddling his lap now, which makes it easier for them to look at each other than it had been a moment before. Although when she is this close, it’s hard for him to not just tuck his face into her neck and breathe her in, will his body to disintegrate down to only atoms so that he can lose himself inside of her and never have to deal with being again. “Maybe I got it from looking at you. You’re so hot you burned up all my synapses.”

It’s a terrible line, but Gert chuckles in a way that is fond and does not move off his lap. Their hands are still threaded together, but Chase lets one go so that he can place it tenderly on her neck. That makes Gert stop laughing, sucking her breath in sharp through her teeth in a way that makes him worry she hates it until he catches her eyes and they are anything but upset. “That’s okay?”

She nods. “That’s okay.”

Then she kisses him, and he wants to say don’t, wants to warn her away with the truth of everything that he is, in all the ways that he is lacking. There should be cards for this, he thinks. Hallmark could make a killing manufacturing warning labels for screw-ups like him. Human disaster. Never lives up to any expectations. Failure, failure, failure. It blinks like a railroad crossing light in his brain. But Gert’s mouth is on his, her tongue pressing forward against his own, and she has let go of his other hand so that she can ball both hands into his shirt, clinging like her life depends on it.

Oh, don’t, he wants to say. Don’t depend on me. Don’t trust me. But it’s too late. He can’t now. He can’t let her go now.

“That’s okay?” she asks when she breaks away to pant for breath, forehead against his, hands still balled into his shirt.

Chase has one hand in her hair and the other on her waist, pulling her incrementally closer. “That’s okay,” he says instead of admitting that she should have someone worth her time, which is what he will never be. Not even if he changes. Not even if he tries. But he is. He is going to try. “That is very much okay.”

She kisses him again, and he opens his mouth, lets every active thing in Gert drown out the voices in his head that whisper and hiss failure at him all day long. It occurs to him, only a little, that the same voice may exist in her own head. Perhaps they might not be enough on their own, but maybe together. Maybe together it’ll be okay. He hopes so because now that she is on his lap, kissing him, hands unfurling from his shirt to skate over skin, Chase is positive that it doesn’t matter if he will inevitably fail her because he cannot leave her.


End file.
